THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


THE  COLLECTION  OF 
NORTH  CAROLINIANA 

PRESENTED  BY 

Louis  Round  ViTilson 

C378 

UK3 
1915 


UNIVERSJTYOF  N,C,  AT  CHAPEL  h 


00039136675 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


{'lb 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hil 


http://www.archive.org/details/inauguraladdressOOgrah 


SCHOOL  AND  SOCIETY 


Volume  I 


Saturday,  May  1,  1915 


Number  18 


INAUGURAL    ADDRESS    AT    THE    UNI- 
VERSITY OF  NORTH   CAROLINAi 

Tins  hiii:h  fniumissioii  I  receive  from  the 
state  in  a  spirit  of  deep  and  reverent  con- 
fidence that  does  not  springs  from  any 
thought  of  personal  resource.  If  all  of  the 
wealth  of  treasured  memory  and  hope  that 
this  institution  represents  were  an  individ- 
ual responsibility,  it  would  be  a  burden  too 
heavy  to  be  borne ;  but  this  great  company 
of  her  sons,  and  her  kindred,  and  her 
friends  is  testimony  to  the  wide  and  loyal 
fellowship  of  learning  that  hedg&s  her 
securely  round  about,  and  makes  the  indi- 
vidual heart  strong  enough  for  anything. 
Nor  less  rea.ssuring,  as  the  standard  passes 
to  an  untried  hand,  is  the  host  of  happy 
thoughts  released  by  the  presence  of  those 
who  since  the  reopening  gave  themselves 
to  her  guidance  in  wisdom  and  complete 
devotion.  To  them  to-day  the  institution 
pays  the  perfect  tribute  of  her  abundant 
life  that  they  gave  their  strength  to  pro- 
mote: to  her  latest  leader,  the  architect  of 
her  material  rebuilding,  whose  w'ise  and 
patient  care  inwrought  into  her  standard 
the  ideals  of  modern  scholarship ;  to  his 
predecessor,  whose  sympathetic  insight  and 
statesman-like  vision  gave  eloquent  ex- 
pression to  the  voiceless  aspiration  of  his 
people  and  made  him  their  interpreter,  both 
to  themselves  and  to  the  nation ;  to  his  pre- 
decessor, whose  aggressive  and  brilliant 
leadership  performed  the  essential  service 
of  making  the  university  a  popular  right 
and  privilege;  to  his  predecessor — the  his- 

1  Delivered  by  Dr.  Edward  Kidder  Graham,  Uni- 
versity of  Nortli  Carolina,  on  April  21,  1915,  on  the 
occasion  of  his  installation  as  president  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  North  Carolina. 


torian  of  her  heroic  past,  on  whoso  heart 
each  syllal)le  of  her  story  Ls  written — who 
lived  through  a  period  of  bitterness  with- 
out a  hate,  who  endured  poverty  without 
a  regret,  achieved  honor  without  pride, 
and  who  now  so  deeply  sharas  the  eternal 
youth  about  him  that  age  finds  him  with  a 
heart  so  young  and  a  life  so  full  of  affec- 
tion and  praise  that  he  is  the  witness  of  his 
own  immortality. 

As  the  mind  dwells  on  all  of  this  exalted 
loyalty  and  unselfish  devotion,  once  again 
persons,  even  the  most  heroic,  fade  into  the 
background  of  the  cause  that  evoked  their 
heroisms,  and  our  present  ceremonial  be- 
comes less  the  installation  of  an  individual 
than  a  reverent  and  passionate  dedication 
of  all  of  us  and  all  of  the  energies  and 
powers  of  all  of  us  to  the  civilization  that 
the  institution  exists  to  serve. 

The  life  of  this  institution  began  with 
the  life  of  the  nation  itself ;  and  the  period 
since  its  rebirth  in  1875  is  the  great  pe- 
riod of  national  construction.  In  these 
forty  years  the  nation  was  caught  up  in  the 
giant's  swing  of  its  material  release,  and 
through  the  exploitation  and  development 
of  its  natural  resources,  through  immi- 
gration, invention,  industrial  combina- 
tion, and  commercial  expansion  constructed 
a  civilization  startling  and  wonderful  in 
the  things  it  fashioned,  in  the  type  of  con- 
structive genius  it  elicited,  in  the  new  tyr- 
annies and  ideals  it  evolved.  In  this  nota- 
ble half-century,  all  America  became,  in 
the  summarizing  phrase  of  Mr.  Wells, 
"one  tremendous  escape  from  ancient  ob- 
sessions into  activity  and  making."  Its 
liberated  energies  drew  from  the  wealth 


614 


SCHOOL  AND  SOCIETY 


[Vol.  I,  No.  18 


of  the  continent  material  achievements 
and  qualities  of  a  sort  unmatched  in  the 
history  of  civilization,  through  which  it 
became,  in  its  own  brave  acclaim  of  con- 
quest and  creation,  "triumphant  democ- 
racy. ' ' 

The  section  that  this  institution  served 
was  only  partly  affected  by  this  great 
expansion;  but  for  it,  too,  the  period  is 
more  than  anything  else  a  period  of  con- 
struction and  making.  In  the  last  ten 
years  of  the  existence  of  this  institution 
before  the  war,  the  wealth  of  the  south 
was  about  one  half  that  of  the  whole 
country.  In  these  ten  years,  its  wealth  in- 
creased one  billion  dollars  more  than  that 
of  New  England  and  the  Middle  States 
combined.  In  1875,  when  the  university 
began  its  life  over  again,  the  whole  south 
was  bankrupt. 

In  these  forty  years  of  material  rebuild- 
ing it  too  has  escaped  from  ancient  ob- 
sessions not  a  few,  and  has  won,  in  patience 
and  fortitude  under  the  austere  discipline 
of  a  fierce,  unequal  struggle,  not  only  the 
spiritual  compensations  of  the  struggle, 
but  material  liberation  that  is  not  a  prom- 
ise but  an  immediate  reality.  And  while 
it  is  under  the  thrill  of  the  prosperity 
within  its  grasp,  it  is  not  primarily  because 
in  the  past  ten  years  its  bank  deposits  and 
the  capital  invested  in  its  manufactures 
have  increased  tenfold,  that  half  of  the  na- 
tion's exports  originate  in  its  ports,  that  a 
world  treasure  hidden  in  its  oil,  gas,  coal, 
iron,  water-power  and  agriculture  makes 
certain  the  fact  that  the  next  great  expan- 
sion in  national  life  will  be  here,  and  that 
here  will  be  "the  focusing  point  of  the 
world's  commerce" ;  the  summons  that  puts 
the  eager  and  prophetic  tone  in  southern 
life  to-day  is  the  consciousness  that  here 
under  circumstances  pregnant  with  happy 
destiny  men  will  make  once  more  the  ex- 
periment of  translating  prosperity  in  terms 


of  a  great  civilization.  It  is  to  leadership 
in  this  supreme  adventure  of  democratic 
commonwealth  building  that  the  univer- 
sities of  the  south  are  called,  and  their 
real  achievements  depend  upon  the  sure 
intelligence,  sympathy  and  power,  with 
which  they  perform  their  vital  function, 
and  make  authoritative  answer  to  the  com- 
pelling question  of  the  people  as  to  what,  if 
anything,  in  the  way  of  clear  guidance  they 
have  to  offer,  or  must  we  look  to  another? 
An  institution  to  express  and  minister  to 
the  highest  aspirations  of  man  was  an  im- 
mediate provision  of  the  founders  of  the 
first  states  of  the  new  republic.  It  was  a 
part  of  the  organic  law  of  North  Carolina, 
and  the  University  of  North  Carolina  was 
the  first  of  the  state  universities  to  be 
chartered,  followed  quickly  by  those  of 
Georgia  and  South  Carolina.  They  were 
fostered,  however,  not  by  the  whole  peo- 
ple, but  by  groups  of  devoted  men  who 
sought  to  have  them  perform  for  the  new 
country  the  noble  service  of  the  historic 
colleges  of  the  old.  It  was  the  author  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  who  by  faith 
saw  in  the  new  country  a  new  civilization 
with  a  new  philosophy,  and  who  saw  im- 
plicit in  that  a  new  institution  for  its  reali- 
zation. Jefferson  sought  to  create  in  the 
university  of  the  state  an  institution  that 
would  not  only  through  traditional  culture 
values  give  to  the  state  "legislators,  and 
judges  .  .  .  and  expound  the  principles 
and  stnicture  of  government,"  but  would 
also  "harmonize  and  promote  the  inter- 
ests of  agriculture,  manufacture  and  com- 
merce, and  by  well  formed  views  of  polit- 
ical economy  give  free  course  to  public 
industry."  To  the  traditional  models  then 
existent  he  advocated  an  institution  that 
would  meet  all  the  needs  of  all  of  the  state, 
and  to  this  end  planned  courses  in  manual 
training,  engineering,  agriculture,  horti- 
culture, military  training,  veterinary  sur- 


May  1,  1913] 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


615 


pery,  aiul  for  suhnols  of  coinnnTce,  manu- 
faetnrinfj  and  tliploiiuR-y.  and  in  tlie  details 
of  its  administration  ho  planned  to  keep  it 
flexil)le  and  responsive  to  the  people's  need. 

But  in  spite  of  this  splendid  proufram 
the  state  university  could  not  come  into  its 
own  in  the  south,  nor  for  a  hundred  years 
be  realized  anywhere.  The  great  American 
idea  that  Jefferson  conceived  had  to  wait 
until  America  itself  could  come  into  beinjr, 
find  the  mission  of  interpretative  leader- 
ship passed  to  other  hands,  as  the  section 
which  gave  it  birth  lost  contact  with  the 
spirit  of  national  life. 

The  evolution  of  the  American  state  uni- 
versity during  the  past  hundred  years  is 
the  record  of  the  gradual  fulfilling  of  Jef- 
ferson's splendid  vision.  It  represents  the 
vital  history  of  the  contribution  of  nine- 
teenth-eenturj'  America  to  the  progress  of 
mankind.  The  diffusion  of  wealth  and 
knowledge,  geographical  and  scientific  dis- 
covery, new  inventions  and  new  ideals,  not 
only  put  a  power  and  a  passion  into  mate- 
rial making  and  construction,  but  they  fash- 
ioned institutions  of  training  in  whatever 
vocation  the  all-conquering  hand  of  mate- 
rialism demanded,  and  these  as  they  de- 
veloped were  added  to  those  that  other 
civilizations  had  created.  To  the  institu- 
tions that  seek  to  express  man's  inner  life 
and  his  relations  to  the  past  and  the  fixity 
of  those  relations,  it  added  institutions  that 
interpret  his  outer  life,  his  relation  to  the 
present  and  his  infinite  capacity  for  prog- 
ress. It  seeks  to  reassert  for  present  civili- 
zation what  past  civilizations  say  to  Amer- 
ica, together  with  what  America  has  to  say 
for  itself.  Through  its  colleges  of  liberal 
arts,  pure  and  applied  science,  professional 
and  technical  schools  it  repeats  the  culture 
messages  of  the  prophets  of  the  nineteenth 
century :  Arnold's  message  of  sweetness  and 
light;  Huxley's  message  of  the  spirit  of 


iiii|uiry,  and  Carlyle's  me.s.sage  of  the  spirit 
of  work. 

In  this  grouping,  then,  of  the  college  of 
culture,  the  college  of  research,  the  college 
of  vocation  into  a  eompartniental  organiza- 
tion of  efficient  and  specialized  parts,  sup- 
plemented by  the  idea  of  centering  its 
energy  and  ingenuity  in  putting  all  of  its 
resources  directly  at  the  service  of  all  the 
people — is  this  the  ultimate  thought  of  this 
greatest  institution  of  the  modern  state, 
and  is  its  future  to  be  concerned  merely 
with  perfecting  these  parts  and  further  ex- 
tending their  utility? 

Culture  as  learning,  science  as  investiga- 
tion, and  work  as  utility,  each  has  an 
eternal  life  of  its  own,  and  to  perfect 
each  of  them  for  the  performance  of  its 
special  work  will  always  be  an  aim  of 
the  university.  But  this  conception  of 
its  function  as  a  university  is  neces- 
sarily partial  and  transitional.  Tyndall, 
in  his  great  Belfast  address  made  in  1874, 
points  out  that  it  is  not  through  science, 
nor  through  literature  that  human  nature 
is  made  whole,  but  through  a  fusion  of  both. 
Through  its  attempt  to  make  a  new  fusion 
of  both  with  work  during  the  great  con- 
structive years  of  the  past  half-century,  our 
civilization  has  caught  the  impulse  of  a  new 
culture  center.  It  is  this  that  the  state  uni- 
versity seeks  to  express.  It  is  more  than  an 
aggregate  of  parts.  As  a  university  it  is  a 
living  unity,  an  organism  at  the  heart  of 
the  living  democratic  state,  interpreting  its 
life,  not  by  parts,  or  by  a  summary  of  parts, 
but  wholly — fusing  the  functions  of  brain 
and  heart  and  hand  under  the  power  of  the 
immortal  spirit  of  democracy  as  it  moves 
in  present  American  life  to  the  complete 
realization  of  what  men  really  want.  The 
real  measure  of  its  power  will  be  whether, 
discarding  the  irrelevancies  of  the  past  and 
present,  it  can  focus,  fuse  and  interpret 
their    eternal    verities    and    radiate    them 


616 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


[Vol.  I,  No.  18 


from  a  new  organic  center  of  culture.  This, 
let  it  tentatively  define  as  achievement 
touched  bj'  fine  feeling — as  truth  alive  and 
at  work  in  the  world  of  men  and  things. 

Such  new  centers  are  the  vital  source  of 
civilization,  and  the  propulsive  power  of 
progress.  Every  now  and  then  in  human 
history  men  make  a  synthesis  of  their 
ideals,  giving  redirection  and  increased  pro- 
jection to  their  energies  on  new  and  higher 
levels  of  achievement.  Truly  great  creative 
periods  thus  result  from  the  liberation  of 
men  through  new  revelations  of  deeper 
and  richer  values  in  their  new  relations. 
Classical  learning  gave  Europe  such  a 
period  in  the  Renaissance;  science  gave 
the  modem  world  such  a  period,  each  ex- 
pressing itself  through  a  great  educational 
institution,  typifying  the  union  of  past 
ideals  into  a  new  center  of  reality.  The 
American  state  university  of  the  twentieth 
century  is  an  organism  of  the  productive 
state,  striving  to  express  in  tangible  real- 
ities the  aspirations  of  present  democracy, 
as  it  adjusts  itself  to  the  liberations  of  a 
new  humanism. 

The  evolution  of  the  democratic  state  in 
the  past  hundred  years  as  an  attempt  to 
actualize  in  human  society  the  principles 
of  liberty,  equality  and  brotherhood  is 
parallel  to  that  of  the  state  university. 
Traditional  ideals  and  institutions  it,  too, 
inherited  that  it  could  not  wilfully  dis- 
card; new  ideals  it,  too,  aspired  to  that  it 
could  not  immediately  achieve.  Its  conti- 
nental task  of  "construction  and  making" 
made  the  production  of  material  values  its 
necessary  concern.  The  incarnation  of 
the  great  anti-feudal  power  of  commerce 
was  inevitable,  not  only  to  break  the  bonds 
of  the  "ancient  obsessions,"  but  to  open 
through  its  material  might  railways,  steam- 
ship lines,  canals,  telegraph  and  telephone 
systems,  good  roads,  schoolhouses  and  li- 
braries, as  avenues  to  liberation.    In  its  de- 


velopment it  created  its  own  abnormal 
standards  and  tyrannies,  and  became  so 
obsessed  with  material  freedom  that  equal- 
ity seemed  a  contradiction  and  cooperation 
the  vision  of  a  dreamer.  Its  life  was  in- 
dividualistic, compartmental,  and  fiercely 
competitive.  Its  ideal  was  efficiency;  its 
criterion,  dividends;  but  present  democ- 
racy, if  it  has  not  yet  focused  the  light  to 
the  new  center  toward  which  it  moves,  is 
steadily  illumined  by  it.  Democracy  has 
come  to  mean  more  than  an  aggregate  of 
vocations,  grouped  for  the  purpose  of  ma- 
terial exploitation.  The  whole  effort  of 
the  productive  state  is  to  unify  its  life,  not 
by  casting  out  material  good,  but  by  inter- 
preting and  using  it  in  its  symmetrical  up- 
building. 

Great  progress  toward  making  the  state 
a  cooperative  organism  in  the  equal  dis- 
tribution of  all  the  elements  of  life  to  all 
according  to  their  capacity,  has  been  made 
in  the  evolution  of  business  itself.  "Busi- 
ness is  business"  is  no  longer  its  ultimate 
thought.  In  perfecting  its  parts  for  effi- 
ciency it  discovered,  not  merely  the  value 
of  cooperation  in  the  individual  business, 
but  in  the  larger  aggregates  of  material 
expansion  that  the  cooperation  of  manufac- 
tures, commerce  and  agriculture  is  neces- 
sary to  prosperity,  and  that  the  weakness 
of  one  is  the  weakness  of  all.  It  has  come 
to  see  in  addition  to  this  extensive  unity, 
an  intensive  unity  in  its  dependence  on 
knowledge,  science  and  ethics;  and  more 
deeply  still  that  the  organic  center  of  all 
of  its  actions  and  interactions  for  libera- 
ting its  efficiency  and  its  life  to  a  higher 
level  of  productivity  is  in  raising  the  pro- 
ductivity of  all  of  the  men  engaged  in  it 
by  liberating  all  of  their  wholesome  facul- 
ties. Scientific  management,  which  will 
in  the  present  century  mark  as  great  prog- 
ress in  production  as  the  introduction  of 
machinery  did  in  the  past  century,  shifts 


May  1,  ]9I5] 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


617 


the  main  emphasis  of  production  from  tho 
iiuifhine  to  the  worker.  The  new  freedom 
in  whatever  form — in  business,  polities,  re- 
liiiion  and  philosophy — is  a  manifestation 
(if  the  effort  of  democracy  to  establish  the 
supremacy  of  human  values,  and  so  to 
make  of  itself  the  creative,  spiritual  or- 
^'anism  it  must  be.  From  this  new  center 
of  constructive  cooperation,  it  is  already  in 
its  effort  to  abolish  ignorance,  poverty,  dis- 
ease and  crime,  sendinp:  confident  premon- 
itions of  fuller  life  and  new  and  braver 
reconstructions.  The  productive  demo- 
cratic state  would  make  of  itself  an  organ- 
ism, by  making  its  eompartmental  life  a 
I'.nion  of  all  of  its  parts,  as  the  nation  made 
of  the  states  a  territorial  union.  It  would 
perfect  the  parts  through  the  stronger, 
fuller  life  of  the  whole ;  it  would  lose  none 
of  the  good  of  individual  initiative  and 
material  success,  but  would  translate  it  all 
into  the  whole  term  of  higher  human 
values.  It  cries  with  the  creative  joy  of 
.spent  life  renewed : 

All  good  things  are  ours, 
Nor  soul  helps  flesh  more 
Than  flesh  helps  soul. 

The  state  university  is  the  instrument  of 
democracy  for  realizing  all  of  these  high 
and  healthful  aspirations  of  the  state. 
Creating  and  procreated  by  the  .state  it 
has  no  immediate  part,  however,  in  a  spe- 
cific social  program.  Its  service  is  deeper 
and  more  pervasive.  It  sees  its  problem  as 
positive,  not  negative ;  as  one  of  funda- 
mental health,  not  of  superficial  disease. 
It  looks  on  the  state  as  a  producer;  not  as 
a  policeman.  It  is  not  so  much  concerned 
with  doing  a  certain  set  of  things,  as  in- 
fusing the  way  of  doing  all  things  with  a 
certain  ideal.  Not  by  spasmodic  reform, 
nor  by  sentiment,  nor  by  the  expiations 
of  philanthropy ;  but  by  understanding, 
criticism,  research  and  applied  knowledge 
it  would  reveal  the  unitv  of  the  channels 


through  which  life  flows,  and  minister  to 
the  purification  of  its  currents.  It  would 
conceive  the  present  state  and  all  of  its 
jiractical  problems  as  the  field  of  its  serv- 
ice, but  it  would  free  the  term  service  from 
the  narrowing  construction  of  immediate 
jiractise.  The  whole  function  of  education 
is  to  make  straight  and  clear  the  way  for 
the  liberation  of  the  spirit  of  men  from  the 
tyranny  of  place  and  time,  not  by  running 
away  from  the  world,  but  by  mastering 
it.  The  univer.sity  would  hold  to  the  truth 
of  practical  education  that  no  knowledge 
is  worth  while  that  's  not  related  to  the 
jiresent  life  of  man;  it  would  reject  it.s 
error  that  only  knowledge  of  nearby  things 
has  such  a  relation ;  it  would  hold  to  the 
truth  of  classical  education  (I  quote)  that 
"things  high  and  far  away  often  bestow 
best  control  over  things  that  are  detailed 
and  near,"  and  reject  its  error  of  conclud- 
ing that  because  certain  things  are  high 
and  distant  they  must  passess  that  power. 
It  would  emphasise  the  fact  that  research 
and  classical  culture  rightly  interpreted 
are  as  deeply  and  completely  service  as  any 
vocational  service;  but  it  would  consider 
their  service  too  precious  to  be  confined  in 
cloisters  and  .sutficiently  robust  to  inhabit 
the  walks  of  men.  The  whole  value  of 
university  extension  depends  upon  the  va- 
lidity' of  the  purity  and  power  of  the  spirit 
of  the  truth  from  which  it  is  derived.  Ex- 
tension it  would  interpret,  not  as  thinly 
stretching  out  its  resources  to  the  state 
boundaries  for  the  purposes  of  protective 
popularity,  or  as  carrying  down  to  those 
without  the  castle  gates  broken  bits  of 
learning;  but  as  the  radiating  power  of  a 
new  passion,  cariying  in  natural  circula- 
tion the  unified  culture  of  the  race  to  all 
parts  of  the  body  politic.  It  would  inter- 
pret its  service,  not  as  sacrifice ;  but  as  life, 
the  normal  functioning  of  life  as  fniitful 


618 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


[Vol.  I,  No.  18 


and  fnndamental  as  the  relation  between 
the  vine  and  the  branches. 

It  is  this  organic  relation  to  the  demo- 
cratic state  that  puts  the  southern  state 
university  at  the  vital  center  of  the  state's 
formative  material  prosperity.  "What 
are  southern  universities  doing,"  asks  a 
great  industrial  leader,  "to  give  economic 
independence  to  southern  industry?"  It 
is  a  fair  challenge,  and  the  state  univer- 
sity joyfully  acknowledges  its  obligation 
fully  to  meet  it.  It  is  a  part  of  the  busi- 
ness of  laboratories  to  function  in  the  pi*o- 
ductive  state  by  solving  the  problems  of 
embarrassed  industry.  Science  has  so 
faithfully  performed  this  obligation  that 
the  main  arch  of  modern  industry  rests  on 
the  laboratory.  Applied  science  no  less 
truly  rests  on  pure  science  and  the  libera- 
ting currents  of  the  spirit  of  inquiry  and 
investigation  that  is  the  vital  spark  of  mod- 
ern life.  The  first  great  step  in  the  in- 
dependence of  southern  industry  will  be 
the  realization  of  its  dependence.  Our 
whole  electrical  power  liberation,  signifi- 
cant now  in  achievement  and  thrilling  in 
prophecy,  is  the  cooperation  of  a  hundred 
forces,  the  most  important  of  which  is  the 
vital  force  of  unknown  investigators  whose 
labor  and  spirit  opened  the  current  to  the 
wheels  of  productive  industry.  Says 
Walter  Bagehot: 

If  it  had  not  been  for  quiet  people  who  sat  still 
and  studied  the  sections  of  the  cone,  if  other  quiet 
people  had  not  sat  still  and  worked  out  the  doc- 
trine of  chances  .  .  .  ;  if  star  gazers  had  not 
watched  long  and  carefully  the  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  our  modern  astronomy  would  have 
been  impossible,  and  without  our  astronomy  our 
ships,  our  colonies,  our  seamen,  and  all  that  makes 
modern  life  could  not  have  existed. 

The  aniline  dye  industry  of  Germany  is 
not  the  product  of  the  clever  alchemy  of  a 
laboratory  merely.  It  is  the  logical  result 
of  a  great  state  replacing  through  its  uni- 
versity "by  intellectual  forces  the  physical 


forces  lost  by  war."  It  is  the  result,  too, 
of  the  fusion  with  this  of  industrial  states- 
manship; the  result  of  a  mastery  of  in- 
dustry's extensive  and  intensive  relations 
in  economic  law,  foreign  commerce,  sci- 
ence and  diplomacy.  Says  the  Secretary 
of  Commerce: 

Foreign  trade  begins  inside  a  man 's  head,  in  the 
shape  of  knowledge  of  the  country  to  which  he 
would  sell — its  customs,  finances,  language, 
weights,  measures,  and  business  methods. 

The  state  university  would  make  clear 
the  fact  that  in  its  relation  to  southern  in- 
dustry, while  it  regards  every  practical 
need  as  an  opportunity  for  service,  its  still 
larger  service  is  in  making  clear  the  re- 
lations that  radiate  from  industry  in  con- 
centric fields  of  knowledge  that  either  en- 
slave it  if  they  are  not  understood,  or  lib- 
erate it  in  ever  increasing  life  and  power 
if  they  are  understood.  And  their  chief 
liberation  is  the  setting  free  of  the  master 
of  industry  himself.  All  industry  that  is 
worthy  of  absorbing  a  man's  life  is  in  the 
grasp  of  the  world  relations  and  under 
the  grim  test  of  world  standards.  Any 
work  that  does  evoke  a  man's  full  facul- 
ties in  mastering  its  relations  is  worthy 
work.  So  it  is  the  function  of  the  univer- 
sity, not  merely  to  bring  its  resources  to 
bear  in  solving  practical  problems  of  in- 
dustry and  discovering  through  its  inner 
relations  the  field  of  southern  industry  as 
a  field  of  statesmanship,  but  in  discovering 
thereby  the  further  truth  that  in  perfect- 
ing its  relations  it  becomes  a  liberal  voca- 
tion in  saving  the  man  and  all  of  his  higher 
faculties,  not  from  business,  but  through 
business.  Salvation  will  come  there  or  no- 
where. The  question  for  southern  industry 
is  whether  in  the  world  opportunity  that 
opens  ahead,  it  will  attempt  the  futile  ex- 
periment of  becoming  big  through  super- 
ficial and  selfish  efficiency,  or  whether 
through  a  mastery  of  all  of  its  relations, 


Mat  3,  ]9]5] 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


619 


while  becoming  big  it  will  also  become 
great. 

One  of  the  belatctl  visions  of  southern 
business  and  eilucational  statesmanship  is 
that  we  can  have  here  no  full  prosperity  or 
civilization  unless  agriculture  is  maile  truly 
productive.  In  our  individualistic,  polit- 
ical and  economic  life  we  have  flattered  it, 
ignored  it,  or  exploited  it.  We  have  lately 
awakened  to  the  fact  that  it  is  an  almost 
dead  center  at  the  heart  of  southern  prog- 
ress, and  we  have  had  the  vision  that  it  is 
our  function  to  cooperate  with  it  fully  and 
wholly.  It  is  inevitable  that  society's  need 
will  make  farming  efficient  as  a  business. 
In  bringing  this  about  one  of  two  processes 
is  possible:  that  it  be  developed  as  other 
great  businesses  are,  with  routine  skilled 
labor  under  captains  of  industry;  or  that 
it  be  made  a  liberal  human  vocation,  each 
farm  home  the  center  of  a  whole  and  whole- 
some life,  and  perfecting  the  development 
of  a  definite  and  complete  civilization. 
What  will  make  it  realize  its  higher  destiny 
will  not  be  a  limited  view  of  it  as  a  manual 
vocation.  It  is  a  manual  vocation,  and  as 
such  should  be  trained  to  the  highest  hu- 
man efficiency  as  a  producer  of  wealth.  It 
must  be  more  deeply  interpreted,  however, 
if  it  is  to  attract  and  hold  men  of  energy 
and  initiative.  In  its  relation  to  nature, 
to  the  applied  sciences,  to  economics,  and 
the  social  sciences  agriculture  has  rela- 
tions that  put  it  on  the  full  current  of  the 
forces  that  make  for  human  cultiire  through 
right  relations  to  it  as  work  by  evoking, 
not  only  prosperity  from  the  soil,  but  the 
higher  faculties  of  the  man  himself — ma- 
king of  the  cropper,  the  farmer;  and  of  the 
farmer,  man-on-the-farm. 

The  reality  of  the  state  university's 
power  to  liberate  the  faculties  and  aspira- 
tions of  the  workers  in  the  productive  state 
depends  on  the  force  of  that  power  as 
generated  in  it  as  an  association  of  teach- 


ers and  students,  given  wholly  to  the  pur- 
suit of  truth  and  free  from  the  distractions 
of  making  a  living.  The  heart  of  this  as.so- 
ciation,  the  college  of  liberal  arts  and  sci- 
ences, has  as  its  mission  now  as  always  the 
revelation  of  the  full  meaning  of  life  in  its 
broad  and  general  relations,  and  to  fix  in 
the  heart  of  its  youth  a  point  of  outlook  on 
the  field  of  human  endeavor  from  which  to 
see  it  clearly  and  to  see  it  whole.  It  fears 
no  criticism  based  on  an  interpretation  of 
its  mission  as  "impractical";  but  it  does 
regard  as  fatal  any  failure  to  evoke  the 
best  powers  of  its  own  student  body.  Presi- 
dent Wilson  has  spoken  of  present  under- 
graduate life  as  "a  non-conducting  me- 
dium" of  intellectual  discipline,  and  Presi- 
dent Pritchett  sums  up  all  possible  con- 
demnation when  he  says  that  it  is  an  organ- 
ization where  conditions  within  are  such 
that  success  in  the  things  for  which  it 
stands  no  longer  appeals  to  those  within  it. 
Failure  to  appeal  may  not  be  laid  to  the 
curriculum,  nor  to  the  spirit  of  youth,  nor 
to  the  spirit  of  the  age.  "The  things  for 
which  it  stands"  in  the  mastery  of  fact,  the 
mastery  of  method,  and  in  spiritual  tone 
will  come  not  because  they  are  latent  in 
Greek  or  in  physics;  but  because  they  are 
made  luminous  there  through  a  revelation 
of  the  broad  and  liberal  relations  of  these 
studies  to  the  life  curiosities  of  the  student. 
A  course  in  Greek  may  be  as  narrowing 
and  as  blighting  to  a  thirsty  spirit  as  a 
dissertation  in  medieval  theology' ;  a  liberal 
arts  curriculum  at  its  conclusion  may  be  in 
the  mind  of  the  young  graduate  not  more 
impressively  unified  and  tangible  than  the 
wreckage  of  a  once  passionate  conte.st  be- 
tween literature  and  science.  The  line  of 
memory  and  repetition  is  the  line  of  least 
resistance  to  student  and  teacher  as  it  is 
in  the  dead  routine  of  everj'  field  of  effort ; 
but  the  liberal  arts  course  is  not  a  mechan- 
ical contrivance  for  standardizing  the  crude 


620 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


[Vol.  I,  No.  18 


material  fed  to  it.  It  is  the  life  history  of 
the  human  spirit  and  its  wonderful  adven- 
tures in  the  world,  unrolled  to  the  eye  of 
aspiring  youth  setting  out  on  its  wonder- 
ful adventure.  For  this  great  business  of 
touching  the  imagination  and  stirring  the 
soul  to  original  activity,  no  formulas  nor 
techniqiie,  however  conscientious,  will  serve. 
For  liberal  training  to  make  its  connec- 
tions, eager  sympathetic  interpretation  is 
necessary,  "with  thought  like  an  edge  of 
steel  and  desire  like  a  flame."  From  the 
center  of  every  subject  runs  the  vital  cur- 
rent of  its  inner  meaning,  and  from  all  sub- 
jects in  the  curriculum  in  converging  lines 
to  the  heart  of  our  present  civilization  and 
its  culture  message.  Intellectual  discipline, 
special  insights,  and  "success  in  the  thing 
for  which  it  stands"  will  appeal  to  those 
within,  not  by  means  of  new  subjects  added 
with  the  thought  of  gaining  interest  nor  by 
repeating  the  assertion  that  the  old  siib- 
jeets  ought  to  have  cultural  appeal;  but  by 
having  the  thing  for  which  it  stands  radi- 
antly and  constantlj^  clear  to  itself  and  the 
touchstone  of  its  activities.  It  is  the  incar- 
nation in  the  individual  of  the  spirit  of  the 
institution  as  it  focuses  and  reflects  the  in- 
most message  of  the  age.  This  is  the  source 
of  the  student's  special  insights,  his  scent 
for  reality,  and  their  fruitage  is  that  pro- 
ductive thinking  that  is  the  supreme  test 
of  the  college. 

The  association  of  teacher  and  student 
in  the  professional  schools  must  have  the 
same  unifying  point  of  view.  Widely  sepa- 
rated as  the  professional  schools  are  in  sub- 
ject-matter, they  have  not  only  a  common 
scientific  method  and  spirit  in  their  pur- 
suit, but  a  common  culture  center  in  their 
larger  human  relations.  Arnold  conceived 
of  the  professional  training  given  at  Cor- 
nell in  the  making  of  engineers  and  archi- 
tects as  an  illustration  of  what  culture  is 
not.     The  criterion  of  the  American  state 


university  is  not  a  matter  of  the  vocation; 
but  whether  in  making  the  student  efficient 
in  his  vocation  it  has  focused  through  his 
studies  its  own  inner  light  so  as  to  liberal- 
ize him  as  a  member  of  democratic  society. 
It  is  not  the  function  of  the  university  to 
make  a  man  clever  in  his  profession  merely. 
That  is  a  comparatively  easy  and  negligible 
university  task.  It  is  also  to  make  vivid  to 
him  through  his  profession  his  deeper  rela- 
tions— not  merely  proficiency  in  making  a 
good  living,  but  productivity  in  living  a 
whole  life.  The  professions  of  law,  medi- 
cine, the  ministry,  journalism,  commerce, 
and  the  rest  are  essential  to  the  upbuilding 
of  a  democratic  commonwealth;  but  they 
must  be  interpreted,  not  as  adventures  in 
selfish  advancement:  but  as  enterprises  in 
constructive  statesmanship,  liberating  both, 
the  state  and  the  man.  It  is  the  function 
of  the  university,  not  only  to  train  men  in 
the  technique  of  law,  but  to  lift  them  to  a 
higher  level  of  achievement  by  making  them 
living  epistles  of  social  justice ;  not  only  to 
make  clever  practitioners  of  medicine,  but 
to  lift  them  into  conservators  of  the  public 
health;  not  merely  to  train  teachers  in  the 
facts  and  the  methods  of  education,  but  to 
fire  them  with  the  conviction  that  they  are 
the  productive  creators  of  a  new  civiliza- 
tion. 

It  recognizes  no  antagonist  in  this  gen- 
eral business  but  ignorance.  Ignorance  it 
conceives  as  the  unpardonable  sin  of  a 
democracy  and  on  it  in  every  form  it  would 
wage  relentless  warfare.  To  this  end  it 
would  unify  and  coordinate  its  whole  sys- 
tem of  public  education  in  a  spiritual  union 
of  elementary  schools  and  secondary  schools, 
of  agricultural  and  mechanical  and  normal 
colleges,  of  private  and  denominational 
schools  and  colleges,  all  as  a  means  to  the 
end  of  the  great  commonwealth  for  which 
men  have  dreamed  and  died  but  scarcely 
dared  to  hope.    Fully  conscious  of  the  con- 


May  1,  1915] 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


621 


fusions  of  prcjiulicp  ami  the  bliiKl  im- 
roason  of  self-intorest  and  srived,  it  is  even 
more  conscious  of  the  curative  powers  of 
the  democratic  state  and  its  indomitable 
purpose  to  be  wholly  free.  So  it  would  en- 
list all  vocations  and  all  professions  in  a 
comprehensive,  state-wide  projiram  of 
achieving  as  a  practical  reality  Burke's 
conception  of  the  state  as  "a  partnership  in 
all  science,  a  partnership  in  all  art.  a  part- 
nership in  every  virtue  and  in  all  perfec- 
tion, and  since  such  a  partnership  can  not 
be  attained  in  one  generation,  a  partner- 
ship between  all  those  who  are  living,  and 
those  who  are  dead,  and  those  who  are  yet 
unborn." 

This  is  the  understanding  of  the  mean- 
ing of  life  which  represents  the  highest 
level  to  which  men  of  our  civilization  have 
attained — the  highest  good  at  which  the 
state  aims.  The  religious  perception  of  our 
time  in  its  widest  application  is  the  con- 
sciousness that  our  well-being,  both  mate- 
rial and  spiritual,  lies  in  intelligent  coop- 
eration. The  state  university  in  its  sym- 
pathetic study  of  relations  that  reconcile 
the  divisions  of  society,  while  not  concerned 
with  differences  in  religious  organization  is 
inevitably  and  profoundly  concerned  with 
religion  itself.  All  of  its  study  of  men  and 
things  leads  through  the  cooperating  chan- 
nels that  connect  them  beyond  the  sources 
of  immediate  life  to  the  one  great  unity  that 
binds  all  together.  The  human  mind,  what- 
ever its  achievement,  in  whatever  fields  of 
endeavor,  "with  the  yearning  of  a  pilgrim 
for  its  home,  will  still  turn  to  the  mystery 
from  which  it  emerged,  seeking  to  give 
unity  to  work  and  thought  and  faith."  The 
state  university  in  its  passionate  effort  to 
fashion  this  unity  into  a  commonwealth  of 
truly  noble  proportions  of  work  and  worth 
and  worship,  reverently  prays  as  it  follows 
the  star  of  its  faith:  "Oh  God.  I  think  Thy 
thoughts  after  Thee." 

Such  is  the  covenant  of  our  immortal 


iiiiither  "with  those  who  are  living  and 
those  who  are  dead  and  those  who  are 
yet  unborn,"  "building  herself  from  im- 
memorial time  as  each  generation  kneels 
and  fights  and  fades."  She  will  hold  se- 
cure her  priceless  heritage  from  her  elder 
sons  as  the  pledge  of  the  faith  she  keeps; 
and  she  will  cherish  the  passionate  loyalty 
of  her  latest  issue  with  the  sacred  pride 
that  only  a  mother  knows;  she  will  seek 
guidance  above  the  confusion  of  voices  that 
cry  out  paths  of  duty  around  her,  in  the 
experience  of  the  great  of  her  kind  the 
world  over;  but  she  will  not,  in  self-con- 
templation and  imitation,  lose  her  own 
creative  power  and  that  original  genius 
that  alone  gives  her  value  in  the  world. 
As  the  alma  mater  of  the  living  state  and 
all  of  its  higher  aspirations  she  would 
draw  from  it  the  strength  that  is  as  the 
strength  of  its  everlasting  hills  and  give 
answer  in  terms  of  whole  and  wholasome 
life  as  fresh  as  the  winds  of  the  world  that 
draw  new  life  from  its  pine-clad  plains. 
Eager,  sympathetic,  unafraid  and  with  the 
understanding  heart  "she  standeth  on  the 
top  of  the  high  places,  by  the  way  in  the 
places  of  the  path;  she  crieth  out  at  the 
entry  of  the  city,  at  the  coming  in  at  the 
doore:  'Unto  you,  0  men,  I  call  and  my 
voice  is  to  the  sons  of  men.'  " 

Edw.\rd  Kidder  Graham 


HIGH   SCHOOLS— NEW   AND    OLD' 

The  American  high  school  is  e.xperienc- 
ing  "growing  pains."  We  are  dissatisfied 
with  the  old  type  of  high  school,  and  we 
are  vaguely  feeling  our  way  towards  a 
new  type.  We  are  driven  to  do  this,  for 
one  thing,  because  of  the  very  magnitude 
of  public  secondary  education  in  this  coun- 
try.    Our  public  high  schools  have  over  a 

1  Notes  of  an  address  given  by  Commissioner 
David  Snedden,  of  Massachusetts,  before  the  Phil- 
adelphia High  School  Teachers '  Association, 
March  20,  1915. 


622 


SCHOOL   AND   SOCIETY 


[Vol.  I,  No.  18 


million  pupils  in  constant  attendance. 
They  cost  the  people  of  America  enough 
money  every  year  to  build  four  battleships. 
They  are  receiving,  on  the  whole,  the 
choicest  of  our  youth — choicest,  that  is, 
from  the  standpoint  of  heredity,  picked 
ability,  good  home  environment,  favorable 
prospects.  These  high  schools  have  the  re- 
sponsibility of  making  out  of  our  youths 
not  only  citizens  and  cultivated  men  and 
women,  but  leading  citizens  and  men  and 
women  so  cultivated  that  their  example 
shall  be  contagious.  Very  few  careful  stu- 
dents of  secondary  education  believe  that 
our  high  schools,  as  to-day  constituted,  in 
reality  do  as  much  as  they  should  towards 
the  making  of  good  citizens  and  cultivated 
men  and  women.  They  receive  their  boys 
and  girls  from  cultivated  surroundings, 
where  a  strong  predisposition  towards  good 
citizenship  already  exists.  The  schools  in- 
deed effect  improvements  in  their  pupils, 
but  rarely  in  proportion  to  the  outlay  of 
time  and  money  invested.  Many  of  us  con- 
stantly repeat,  until  we  accept  almost  as  a 
truism,  the  statement  that  what  is  taught 
in  the  high  school  is  taught  mainly  because 
of  tradition — sometimes  as  held  by  the  pre- 
possessions of  teachers,  more  frequently  as 
defined  by  college  entrance  requirements. 
We  like  to  blame  the  system  of  college  en- 
trance requirements,  but,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  without  the  concrete  aims  set  by  them 
few  high-school  teachers  would  know  what 
to  do  with  their  own  time  or  that  of  their 
pupils.  It  is  college  entrance  require- 
ments that  most  serve  to  give  definiteness 
to  contemporary  high-school  work. 

But  there  is  a  new  high  school  in  the  ma- 
king. It  will  eventually  be  the  outgrowth 
of  our  modern  knowledge  of  social  economy. 
It  will  take  some  account  of  the  psychology 
of  the  adolescent — a  subject  as  to  which 
many  high  school  and  college  educators  are 
pleased  to  remain   oblivious.     Before   we 


shall  have  realized  the  new  high  school, 
however,  it  will  be  necessary  to  have  solved 
a  large  number  of  problems,  some  of  which 
I  think  are  in  process  of  being  defined  and 
analyzed  to-day.  In  order  to  set  forth 
some  of  my  conceptions  as  to  these  prob- 
lems, a  few  contrasts  between  the  old  high 
school,  as  I  think  it  has  been,  and  the  new 
high  school,  as  I  think  I  see  it  in  formative 
process,  may  be  of  interest. 

I.  The  old  high  school  had  immediate 
aims.  It  aimed  to  teach  what  the  text-book 
exhibited  or  what  the  college  entrance  re- 
quirement plan  suggested.  The  teacher 
was  dealing  with  a  definite  body  of  organ- 
ized knowledge,  as  to  the  ultimate  useful- 
ness of  which  he  had  very  little  con- 
ception, although  he  had  much  faith  that, 
somehow  or  somewhere,  it  would  prove 
worth  while.  It  was  the  immediate  aim  of 
the  old  high  school,  among  other  things, 
that  the  pupil  learning  algebra  should  pass 
in  that  subject  with  a  "high  per  cent.," 
and  that  pupils  sent  to  college  should  not 
fail  in  the  entrance  examinations. 

II.  The  old  high  school  also  had  what  it 
alleged  to  be  general  or  ultimate  aims. 
It  expressed  these  by  vague  "omnibus" 
phrases.  For  example,  it  claimed  to  seek 
as  final  goals  the  disciplined  mind,  the 
cultivated  individual,  the  socially  efficient 
person,  or  the  man  or  woman  qualified 
for  self-direction,  possessed  of  good  char- 
acter, predisposed  towards  good  citizen- 
ship, and  enriched  as  to  personal  culture, 
and  the  like.  In  reality  the  production  of 
these  qualities  has  never  been,  in  the  true 
sense,  the  aim  of  the  high  school.  The 
schools  have  had  aspirations  towards  them, 
instead.  These  have  not  been  aims,  because 
an  aim  presupposes  some  comprehension  of 
the  stages  that  must  be  passed  through 
towards  its  realization.  An  aim  also  pre- 
supposes some  possibility  of  testing  the  ex- 
tent to  which  it  is  realized  by  any  partie- 


